Goutiness.

Gout is an acute disease, and shows itself paroxysmally, though the word also expresses the constitutional crasis or state ; and so frequently is this latter the case, that I have time and again heard patients exclaim, "Oh ! everything is gout with the doctors now !"

When we say "gout" we really mean that the individual lives goutily, whether such individual gets attacks of gout or not ; thus the child of a gouty father may teethe goutily and have gouty urticaria, and here the gouty quality cannot be eliminated by gum-lancing or soothing ointments.

Assuming that both parents of a given individual are pronouncedly gouty, how should the offspring be other than gouty ? In the painful menstruation of young ladies I have over and over again cured the dysmenorrhoea by treating the painful affection as of gouty quality, — in fact, as gout. It would be better to restrict the term gout to the form of disease that occurs in attacks of paroxysmal arthritis, and use the

word goutiness to designate the more or less hereditary quality of the constitutional crasis.

In fact. I would use the words goutiness and gout to indicate the same relation which consumptiveness bears to consumption. But in this matter of terminology custom will fix our words for us, no matter what we say or do.